Irrevocable
by obaona
Summary: He visited her once. [Chaya&John of sorts, futurefic, dark ... vague spoilers for The Siege, Part III]


Title: Irrevocable  
Summary: He visited her once. (Chaya/John of sorts, future-fic, dark.)  
**Spoilers**: In a _very_ vague sort of way, for the end of SG-1's Season Eight and everything up until The Siege, Part III in Stargate Atlantis, and anything in the Scifi Lowdown.  
A/N: I could not get this scenario out of my head, I just had to write it. I'm very new to the SGA fandom (insert nervousness here), so feedback/critique would be appreciated. :)

* * *

He visited her once.

She knows in the flicker of action beyond her sight that he was busy on missions, on trying to find one of their energy devices, that time drove him away from her. She knows he thought of her, not often, but often enough, little thoughts that lingered, and it was more than the Others offered her.

She does not leave Procolus. She dances in its skies from time to time, and becomes as lightning, cause and effect, and then meeting, Wraith ships destroyed within her thoughts. She talks to her people, walks among them, and tells them what Athar wills. She has not thought of it as strange or demented, the perfection/notperfection she engenders in the people of Procolus, despite McKay's itchy thoughts on the matter.

When he visited, he told her of meaningless things, things that had passed and mattered within memory. He told her of first flying a puddle jumper—and she likes the name—and how it seemed like magic, so he'd thought of a turkey sandwich. She'd just smiled, and thought it would have been eager to please him by giving him one.

He spoke of things familiar to him when he tried to describe flying. He spoke of surfing and skiing, how it left him breathless and at peace. He admitted to her once that he imagined flying was what being an Ascended was like.

She thinks of the excitement in his eyes, and decides he's probably right.

She feels it when Atlantis falls, because it feels like the universe is splitting, irrevocable; not for the city itself, but for the lives and hopes linked to it. She cannot go from this place, but she has awareness, and she can feel. The Others say nothing, because they have their own concerns and problems, and, as much as they feel the pain of loss of the expedition, they cannot answer it, will not soothe it away.

He returned once to Procolus after that. He did not stay long.

The Others told her she could not offer sanctuary. She told them they could not see the reflection of the pond—and they replied that they didn't look.

They fight their own battles, and she is left bereft from even that.

She kissed him goodbye, and she knew he didn't blame her.

He jumped from planet to planet with the rest, the ability to get home lost, the Asgard told not to come, the _Daedalus_ destroyed. She followed as best she could, able to know things as they occur, but not feel them. He named his P-90, and gave it a little funeral in his head when he lost the weapon, finally. They traveled to worlds touched once by her kind, seeking knowledge which would save them.

They don't find that. They find the gate address of the Wraith homeworld, a gate lost to the Wraith by the doing of her kind long ago. They send through the ZPM they find, she can hear the one called McKay, bright and curious and afraid—_don't you see? I can override the safety, this isn't just a battery, we can fight back_—and she could feel their fierce joy, terrible and dark.

She fled.

But she does not grieve when the Wraith rise in rage.

She began to leave Procolus in fits and pieces, purposely so, moments at a time, nothing like what he had first inspired her to do. She fully embraced what she was in those moments, flying, flying like he had thought Ascension must be like. She followed him, watched as he escaped the Genii by slitting the throat of a guard, finding a hostage, and … she does not see the rest, but she saw him on another world, burying a grave, and he put up marker with 'Rodney McKay' on it.

She does not know when Elizabeth Weir died, chained in mind and body to her planet, though later she saw Dr. Weir's grave, worn away by rains, the only marker that of John's whispered apology, _Sorry, Elizabeth_.

She grieved with him, silently, these feelings parallel to his uninvited.

She thinks of when she shared with him. That, he had told her, had not been like flying. It was like swimming without needing to breathe, like falling into captivating, unknown depths. She believes that it was so because he was skimming the surface, the surface of her and what she was. But for him, that didn't matter, because it really was simple; she was lonely. He could smile, he could talk to her, and she wouldn't be lonely.

She thinks it sad that it was that simple, and everything else complicated it.

She knows the passing of years. When he lay dying on a war-scarred planet, Wraith darts screaming above as he bled to death, laughing at the irony, she went to him. She appeared to him, and he didn't seem surprised—"I thought I sensed you, but I kept – I was thinking, I was going crazy, feeling your grip on my arms …"

A Wraith entered the room, and heedless of all but this moment, she killed it with a thought.

"I don't want to go out that way," he said to her, and she took his hand in hers, feeling the warmth of his skin, the roughness of the dirt and blood mingled on it. He looked around, seeking something, anything in this dank cell, to end what would be horror, as he had ended it for others. Names drifted, _Sumner Elizabeth Zelenka_, and he desperately wanted peace of his own. He ignored her, seeking, until she placed her hand on his chest, calming the shaky breaths.

"I will help you rest," she said to him, because this is all she can grant, so limited, and the Others warned her of following another's path, who now stood eternally locked in battle.

He died, gone beyond her reach, and she thought a very human thought as she returned to Procolus: _Now neither of us will ever fly again. _

.finis.


End file.
